8 Weird Things You Never Knew About Your Eyebrows

Many of us spend a lot of time (and
money!) maintaining our eyebrows, from
waxing to plucking to threading to filling
them in. Most people, however, don’t
know just why we have these arched
patches of hair on our foreheads in the
first place—what purpose do they really
serve? What does the shape and
composition of your brows actually say
about you?
Well, wonder no more! Read on to find
out 8 fun, odd facts about eyebrows.
You’ll never look at yours the same way
again!
1. They’re designed to help us see.
The real function of our brows (aside
from making us look glam, of course) is
to keep moisture out of our eyes when
it’s raining or when we sweat. That
arched shape helps divert liquid to the
side of our faces, keeping those peepers
clear.
2. There’s a lot of hair in there!
According to the Bosley hair transplant
company, the average person has about
250 hairs per eyebrow. However, some
reports show that never-plucked brows
can have as many as 1100 total hairs.
(Wow!)
3. Brows have a lifespan.
The average lifespan of an eyebrow is
four months, meaning the time it takes
for each hair to fall out and new growth
to fill in.
4. They’re crucial for facial recognition.
A study done by MIT found that people
had more trouble correctly identifying
the faces of people they knew when they
were presented with images of them
missing their eyebrows. Thus,
researchers concluded that brows may
be more important for facial recognition
than eyes themselves.
5. Brows are voice-controlled … kind of.
Brows help us signal emotions, but
they’re also on autopilot: As the pitch of
your voice rises, so do your eyebrows
and vice versa. Not only that but when
you make an expression without
thinking, like when you’re surprised,
eyebrows move in a way that’s
symmetrical to each other. Conversely,
when you make what’s called an
‘intended’ expression, like suspicion and
curiosity, your brows will furrow
asymmetrically.
6. They give humans a special edge.
Many mammals have brows and use
them to express emotions, but we’re the
only species that has eyebrows against
bare skin — which, apparently, provides
us with an evolutionary advantage
because our expressions are easier for
our fellow men and women to see and
interpret.
7. We’re not the first to beautify our brows.
When we pluck and define our brows,
we are actually taking part in a long,
long history of facial grooming. Every
culture and time period has had a
different way of shaping their brows: In
Florence during the Renaissance, people
shaved their eyebrows off completely,
while the colonial elite in 18th-century
America preferred to beef their brows
up using grey mouse skin (ew!).
8. Your brows say more about you than you
know.
According to the book Amazing Face
Reading by Mac Fuller, J.D., the type of
eyebrow you have defines who you are.
Curved eyebrows indicate someone who
is people-oriented and needs real-world
examples to understand a problem,
while straight eyebrows imply that
someone is more direct, factual, and
logical, thriving on technical details.
Angled eyebrows, Fuller says, show
someone who likes to be right and
strives to be mentally in-control, no
matter the situation.